the messy, evolving, surprising, out-of-control happening that is life and reckoned with its proximity and relationship to death? What if, instead of being afraid of even talking about death, we saw our lives in some ways as preparation for it? What if we were taught to ponder it and reflect on it and talk about it and enter it and rehearse it and try it on?
What if our lives were precious only up to a point? What if we held them loosely and understood that there were no guarantees? So that when you got sick you weren’t a stage but in a process? And cancer, just like having your heart broken, or getting a new job, or going to school, were a teacher? What if, rather thanbeing cast out and defined by some terminal category, you were identified as someone in the middle of a transformation that could deepen your soul, open your heart, and all the while—even if and particularly when you were dying—you would be supported by and be part of a community? And what if each of these things were what we were waiting for, moments of opening, of the deepening and the awakening of everyone around us? What if this were the point of our being here rather than acquiring and competing and consuming and writing each other off as stage IV or 5.2B?
My mind is reeling. Dr. Shapiro is still talking. I cut him off. “If the cancer is already gone, is chemo really necessary?” He says the line, “It only takes one cell.” But won’t there always be one cell? How will the chemo know to obliterate every single bad cell unless it obliterates every cell? If it obliterates every cell, how will I stay alive?
SCAN
INFUSION SUITE
After meeting with Dr. Koulos and Dr. Shapiro, we were taken on a tour of the chemo ward, otherwise known as the infusion suite, which makes it sound like some high-end tea salon or aromatherapy spa. It was not. There were old people and sick people and bald people and dying people, and now I was one of them. I did not want to be one of them. I tried not to stare. Some were reading, others eating, some gazing into space, some dozing as tubes of poison pumped toxic carboplatin/Taxol/fluorouracil/doxil into their bloodstreams. The people who were by themselves seemed especially lonely. But what devastated me was their quiet, sad surrender. Suspended in their isolated comfy chairs, covered in little blankets, they were without protest, being carried to their end. I wanted to scream, “Hello. I see you. We need to talk. We can fight. We are in this together.” I felt like I did in high schoolwhen I tried to organize all the unpopular girls. I called Linda C and Peggy S and invited them to my house. I said, “Let’s face it, girls, we’re unpopular. Let’s form our own group. Let’s take back the power.” (I am not sure I said anything like that, but I did have a plan.) It failed. Linda and Peggy were highly antisocial, which is why they were unpopular, and they had no desire to create an unpopular-girls uprising. They just wanted to survive mean high school and grow up and be someone else. They didn’t even particularly want to be my friends.
The nurse Regina introduced herself. Toast and Lu began taking notes. “We suggest you get a port. A port? Yes, a steel piece inserted in your chest under the skin. We can inject the chemo directly into it. This will prevent your veins from burning and collapsing. Each session will take five hours. You will be closely monitored.” “Does anything ever go wrong?” I asked. “Do people ever have seriously bad reactions?” “We watch very carefully at the beginning to see how your body reacts. If there is any problem, we stop right away.” “But if it’s already in your body and it goes wrong, how can you stop it from killing you?” “No one has died here.”
She didn’t know me. She didn’t understand that my body couldn’t tolerate these things. I would be their first death. Then they wouldn’t be able to tell people no one had died. I would ruin their
What if our lives were precious only up to a point? What if we held them loosely and understood that there were no guarantees? So that when you got sick you weren’t a stage but in a process? And cancer, just like having your heart broken, or getting a new job, or going to school, were a teacher? What if, rather thanbeing cast out and defined by some terminal category, you were identified as someone in the middle of a transformation that could deepen your soul, open your heart, and all the while—even if and particularly when you were dying—you would be supported by and be part of a community? And what if each of these things were what we were waiting for, moments of opening, of the deepening and the awakening of everyone around us? What if this were the point of our being here rather than acquiring and competing and consuming and writing each other off as stage IV or 5.2B?
My mind is reeling. Dr. Shapiro is still talking. I cut him off. “If the cancer is already gone, is chemo really necessary?” He says the line, “It only takes one cell.” But won’t there always be one cell? How will the chemo know to obliterate every single bad cell unless it obliterates every cell? If it obliterates every cell, how will I stay alive?
SCAN
INFUSION SUITE
After meeting with Dr. Koulos and Dr. Shapiro, we were taken on a tour of the chemo ward, otherwise known as the infusion suite, which makes it sound like some high-end tea salon or aromatherapy spa. It was not. There were old people and sick people and bald people and dying people, and now I was one of them. I did not want to be one of them. I tried not to stare. Some were reading, others eating, some gazing into space, some dozing as tubes of poison pumped toxic carboplatin/Taxol/fluorouracil/doxil into their bloodstreams. The people who were by themselves seemed especially lonely. But what devastated me was their quiet, sad surrender. Suspended in their isolated comfy chairs, covered in little blankets, they were without protest, being carried to their end. I wanted to scream, “Hello. I see you. We need to talk. We can fight. We are in this together.” I felt like I did in high schoolwhen I tried to organize all the unpopular girls. I called Linda C and Peggy S and invited them to my house. I said, “Let’s face it, girls, we’re unpopular. Let’s form our own group. Let’s take back the power.” (I am not sure I said anything like that, but I did have a plan.) It failed. Linda and Peggy were highly antisocial, which is why they were unpopular, and they had no desire to create an unpopular-girls uprising. They just wanted to survive mean high school and grow up and be someone else. They didn’t even particularly want to be my friends.
The nurse Regina introduced herself. Toast and Lu began taking notes. “We suggest you get a port. A port? Yes, a steel piece inserted in your chest under the skin. We can inject the chemo directly into it. This will prevent your veins from burning and collapsing. Each session will take five hours. You will be closely monitored.” “Does anything ever go wrong?” I asked. “Do people ever have seriously bad reactions?” “We watch very carefully at the beginning to see how your body reacts. If there is any problem, we stop right away.” “But if it’s already in your body and it goes wrong, how can you stop it from killing you?” “No one has died here.”
She didn’t know me. She didn’t understand that my body couldn’t tolerate these things. I would be their first death. Then they wouldn’t be able to tell people no one had died. I would ruin their
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